In a survey recently published by Opinion Research for Habitat Heroes, of 500 children aged between 6 and 11, it was found that one-third feared Earth would “not be around” when they grow up. And 56 percent believed the earth would not be a good place to live.
They also found that 50 percent of kids fear hurricanes and tornadoes the most and 28 percent fear extinction of animals such as polar bears. The biggest worries came from among black and Hispanic children and girls worry more than boys with urban kids having more worries than suburban.
What does this say about what we are doing to our children? Has all this attention to saving the earth created a Doomsday scenario that is frightening our children from growing up with a sense of hope and faith that ultimately we are all going to do just fine?
In the UK they found that while children are afraid of similar things, the biggest problem for children is boredom. Fully 74 percent of 200,000 children interviewed said they were bored a lot of the time.
Now, as a mother of four children, I know the words “I’m bored”, and it’s usually tied up with “I can’t be bothered.” It’s all too easy to sit in front of a television, or a computer and zone out. Getting them motivated can be hard. I’m very thankful that my children loved to read, so there was always that element to keep them occupied.
But in this busy world, when both parents are working out of necessity, and children are left to their own devices more often than not, what can we do about this fear that is driving them to believe the world is a threatening, destructive place?
Engaging with our children is number one. Communicating with them about what reality is essential, and it’s not all doom and gloom. Getting our children away from the television and out into nature is one way of introducing them to the world as a place of beauty and growth. But parents also have to do the work to help change their own mindset about fears. Too many are living in a hellhole of their own insecurities, anxieties and fears.
In his book The Science of Fear, Daniel Gardner said we are living in a society that breeds fear. We are conditioned by bad news constantly simply because it sells.
Changing our beliefs takes time, but we can change the channel. Turn off the bad news, turn off the scary stuff. That doesn’t mean we hide our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not going on, but learn to look for more information than the one being fed you by Fox News, or CNN. Bad news sells. Good news is much more transitory. Check out The Good News Network and start being inspired by life, instead of afraid of life, so we can teach our children that life is worth living.
It’s our gift to ourselves and the future.
To learn how you can start changing your mindset go to www.thefearlessfactor.com and pick up your complimentary copy of The 4 Easy Steps to Overcoming Fear
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